Artwork copyright Gayle Bard. Photo courtesy of the artist.

The Chinese Gardens at Fort Worden, 2008

Gayle Bard
(American, born 1936)

Location: Fort Worden State Park, Port Townsend

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

The Chinese Gardens at Fort Worden by Gayle Bard captures the solitude and silence of the wetlands on the west side of Fort Worden State Park, on the Olympic Peninsula in Northwestern Washington. The tidal wetlands have a combination of fresh water and saltwater. Although the area looks "natural" and untouched by humans, it is named "The Chinese Gardens" for its former use as vegetable gardens by Chinese immigrants in the 1880s and 1890s during the construction of Fort Worden. The area's Chinese population peaked at about 450 just before the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and they grew vegetables to eat and sell.

Gayle Bard was commissioned to create a painting for Fort Worden State Park's new Commons building in 2008. The local Art Selection Committee chose the Chinese Gardens as the subject of the painting.

This area was also an important canoe camp location for the S’Klallam and other Tribes, where they camped and collected the bulbs of blue camas flowers for food.

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with Washington State Parks.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Northwest artist Gayle Bard creates realist landscape paintings and three-dimensional works, synthesized into what the artist calls "painterly installations." She lives and works on Bainbridge Island, on Puget Sound, Western Washington.